The Dirty Dozen

Towards the end of 2010, there was a real prospect of new coal-fired power stations being built across Australia. If built, they would have locked in decades of more polluting power.

Today, building new coal power stations just to power our homes and businesses is not a viable option in Australia. This is thanks to many years of campaigning by Greenpeace and other groups with the support of thousands of passionate community members, as well as changing demand for electricity and new policies like the carbon price.

The key guide to new electricity generation across New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia is the Electricity Statement of Opportunities for the National Electricity Market. The 2012 report shows a big decrease in projected electricity demand, meaning there will be no demand for new electricity generation investment for almost a decade. In Western Australia, the equivalent report, the Statement of Opportunities also shows a down-turn in electricity demand and an over-supply of baseload power.

The major factors that have made new coal power an uneconomical energy generation proposition are:

Sustained high international coal prices – new contracts for coal supply have to compete with the demand for exporting from Australia.

The federal government's carbon price.

Community campaigning, for example that saw the HRL coal power station in Victoria lose its government funding.

If there is no demand for new electricity investment until after 2020, what does this mean for coal power in the long-term? With the cost of renewable energy technologies falling and efforts to tackle climate change increasing, coal will only become a less viable energy option.

What happened to the proposed coal power stations?

The detail

The largest expansion of coal power is in NSW, where there are proposals to build two new 2GW power stations – Bayswater II in the Hunter Valley and Mt Piper II in the Blue Mountains. Major upgrades and expansions to existing coal plants are also proposed.

There are proposals to build two coal plants to support the controversial coal-to-liquids (CTL) technology championed by federal Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson.*

The Arckaringa project plans are for an integrated 10 million barrel per year CTL plant with a 560 MW cogeneration power facility. The proponent, Altona, holds three exploration licences covering 2500 sq km in the northern portion of the Permian Arckaringa Basin in South Australia, which contains more than 7.5 billion tonnes of coal.